May 22

Iran Hangs Ex-Air Force Officer for Spying for U.S.TEHRAN

 - Iran has hanged a former air force officer for spying for the United States, the official news agency IRNA reported Tuesday.Mohammad Reza Pedram, 56, was hanged in Tehran's Evin prison at dawn Sunday after the supreme court upheld the death sentence passed against him by a military court, it said.IRNA, quoting a judicial body, said Pedram had defected in 1986, during the 1980-1988 war against Iraq, and traveled to the United States ``where he was hired by the CIA (news - web sites),'' the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites).He was arrested in 1996 when he tried to enter Iran using a false passport, it added. He was court-martialled and sentenced to death.Human rights organizations and exiled opposition groups had called for international pressure to be put on Iran to stop the execution.In 1997, air force colonel Siavash Bayani was executed for spying for the CIA, three years after he returned to Iran from the United States. His execution was based on a law passed in the mid-1990s, which imposed the death penalty for acts of espionage for Israel and the United States. Washington broke diplomatic ties with Iran after radical Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and took its staff hostage.Iran often accuses the United States of plotting to topple its Islamic government.